


two in the morning, hawkins, indiana

by dustingspace



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Fluff and Angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-27
Updated: 2017-12-27
Packaged: 2019-02-22 14:12:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,071
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13168614
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dustingspace/pseuds/dustingspace
Summary: of all the choices he's had to make, he always picked her; and he would, over and over again, to the end of the earth





	two in the morning, hawkins, indiana

“El, you’re trembling.” Mike said, wrapping his fingers around her wrists and tugging them away from her face. “El.”

She’d had a bad dream. She was having loads of bad dreams – dreams about Chicago, Mama, Papa. Dreams about places she never, ever wanted to go again – and people she was afraid to eventually face.

She didn’t have nightmares about the Demogorgon, and she didn’t have nightmares about the Mind Flayer. She had nightmares about people, because after all this time, she’d realized the true monsters were just that.

People.

“Did you have another one?” Mike asked, moving his hands to her shoulders, moving her hair away from her face. She reached for a scrunchie and pulled it back, tying it away. She reached up and touched her cheek: she was crying.

Great. Awesome. Brilliant.

She thought she’d grown out of that by now. It’d been two years since the Mind Flayer. She was in high school. No more tears, no more fears.

She sank back down into the bed and pulled the covers over herself, shivering. It was night; probably two in the morning.

Hopper had become more lax with the rules, but he never would have let Mike sleep over. Mike snuck in the windows some nights, when El called him and told him that she was feeling a little weird (these weird feelings were always the premise for nightmares) and he would sneak in her window past midnight and crawl into bed with her.

It never helped, but waking up with Mike in her bed instead of alone was always, always, always better.

He slipped an arm around her and pressed his chest to her back, his nose against her neck. She shut her eyes and tried to go back to sleep, but she felt –

She didn’t know.

“Mike.” She muttered, tangling their fingers together against her stomach.

“Hm?” He asked, shifting behind her. She felt him yawn against her skin.

“Can we get up?”

“And?”

“Open the window. Go outside.”

Mike paused, moved his arm to support him as he sat up and slipped out of the bed, moving over to the window.

He unlatched it and slipped it open (as quietly as he could, because Hopper was only – god, how many feet away?) and El slipped out of her bed and reached for her coat.

Mike always slept in a sweatshirt and his jeans, and always over the covers, no matter how cold it was.

He said he did it to make her more comfortable; but she knew it was just to protect himself against Hopper’s wrath if he ever walked in.

Mike climbed out of the window first, landing on the leaves with a soft crunch. He reached a hand through the window to help El climb out; she did, her sneakers untied and loose on her feet, and she shoved her hands into her pockets.

“Where do you want to go?” Mike asked, shivering in the winter air. It hadn’t started snowing yet in Hawkins; but they were probably only two weeks out before they could start making snow angels and having snowball fights. Christmas was a month away.

“I just want to go sit somewhere.” El said, shifting on her feet. “And just – you know. Talk. I guess.”

Mike stared at her. El snapped her head around to look at him. She furrowed her brow and frowned, taking a step toward him. “What?”

“I’m worried about you.” He whispered, glancing away and then looking back to her. “This isn’t – like you.”

“Please?” She asked, quieter this time. Mike stared at her a minute more before reaching for her hand, holding it up to press his lips against her knuckles. “Mike.”

“Okay.” He whispered, nodding and reaching up to run a hand through his hair. “My bike’s back here.”

They walked, together, through the woods to Mike’s bike. He’d chained it to a tree, which made El giggle because of how totally ridiculous it looked. He struggled with it for a moment before finally getting it open. He jumped on and El climbed on the back, wrapping her arms around him.

Mike pedaled through the bumpy woods, and they found their way out onto a main road. The bike slipped quietly through Hawkins.

El pressed her cheek to his back. It was absolutely, totally freezing. The cold air made her feel better (she’d rather feel shocking cold than the warm, humid grossness of her small bedroom, cluttered with her things and her stuff and her – everything), and she inhaled as deeply as she could, burrowing this pure night air into her lungs.

She held it, like cigarette smoke, and exhaled. Yeah. This was better.

He pedaled the bike down a few streets and toward the arcade, but took a sharper left so they were headed for a duck pond more on the edge of town. The duck pond was in the center of a small park (something new to Hawkins, which was a phrase rarely ever said with sincerity); basketball courts, a skate park, and a bunch of walking trails that wound in and out of the woods.

It would be empty – but not as scary as just wandering out and around in the woods. El pressed her forehead against Mike’s soft sweatshirt, and she gave him a small squeeze as they entered the park. “Thanks.” She mumbled against him; he didn’t say anything, only nodded his head and kept pedaling.

They stopped at a bench, and he let his bike clatter against it after she climbed off. They sat down on the bench, and Mike curled up, tucking his knees up against his chest and under his sweatshirt. He and El held hands (“for warmth”, he had said, tangling their fingers together tightly) and he waited for her to say something, anything, instead of leaving him with the same silence again and again and again –

“I see her a lot.” El whispered, turning toward him. “Kali. And I wonder if I made the right choice.”

He feels something in his heart that jumps at the word ‘choice’, because he knows the meaning of that word now, all these years later, more than ever before.

He made a choice to keep looking for Will, a choice to protect El, a choice to wait for her for 353 days. All of the choices he’d made, and he doesn’t regret any of them.

He wants to be angry at that; at the fact that she considers anything other than coming home to him as a better choice, but he thinks about his sister and he replies: “Yeah. I get that. She was –”

“My sister. Not my blood, like Nancy or Jonathan and Will, but – my sister. And I left her. She said this thing, and sometimes in my dreams it rings over and over again – she said it felt like she had had a piece of her missing for so long, and that I – I completed her.” El said, squeezing Mike’s hand tightly, “And I think about that and how it – was it selfish of me? To leave her, then? It was like I was ripping a piece of her away –”

“El, it’s selfish of her to expect you to stay.” Mike said, frowning at her, “She shouldn’t have expected you to leave a town and people you knew –”

“People I loved –”

“Right, just for a girl you can remember but someone you don’t know.” Mike said, “You know me. You know Hop, you know Joyce, Lucas, Dustin – we’re as much your family as Kali.”

“But without the – the emotional baggage. Without the same experiences, the same pain. Because no matter what happens, no matter what you go through, you’ll never know.” El said, quickly adding, “I don’t want you to know. I’d rather die than you feel that –”

“El.”

“But it’s not the same.”

Mike pressed his hand against her cheek; she was freezing. He thought about the fact that they could have grabbed gloves, scarves – anything. They didn’t. “We’re stupid for being out here.”

“It feels better.” She said, pulling her face away from his touch. “I feel better in the cold.”

“Good.” Mike said, dropping his hand down to hers. “I’m sorry I don’t know – what you’ve been through. I know but I can’t know, and I know that Kali knowing makes her feel closer to you. But how well did you really know her –”

“Well enough to be able to find her.” El said, staring at him. “And I think about Mama –”

“El.”

“And Papa. And how I was robbed of this like – fucking normal life.” El whispered, and suddenly she’s crying again and muttering curses under her breath, wiping the tears away. “And I feel like everyone is going to leave me because I’m too much to deal with –”

“El – no. Never.”

“And I’m this big fucking hassle because I’m – I’m a secret person. I shouldn’t even really be alive after everything they did to me and everything I had to do and –”

“El.”

“I don’t want you to leave me.” El whispered, and she heaves and shudders as she sobs, leaning forward to collapse against him. “I don’t want you to go because I’m not normal and I’m too much –”

“Never.” Mike whispered, wrapping his arms around her and pulling her to him. “El, I would never, ever even fucking think about that. I have never considered that.”

“You always have the choice.” She mumbled against his sweatshirt. He shakes his head and runs a hand through her hair.

“I would never give myself that choice.” He replied, “I would _never_ want that.”

“I’m sorry –”

“Don’t be. El, if I had a choice between you and – and everyone else in the world, it would be you. I would pick you every time, over and over and over again. There would never be a time when I wouldn’t pick you.” Mike said, pulling away from her to look at her face. El moved a hand to his cheek. She sniffed and wiped away her tears, taking a deep breath and turning away. “If I had to make that choice, I would always pick you.”

“You don’t mean that –”

“How can you say that?” Mike asked, rubbing his hands together. “After everything we’ve been through together. After everything we’ve seen – how could you ever think I’d want to be with anyone but you? You know – you may have gone through some really bad shit with Kali. But El – we’ve been through some shit, too. And you’re right. Going through horrible things together does make you closer to someone. It’s true for you and Kali. It’s true for me and you.” Mike said, reaching for her. El let him wrap an arm around her. She pressed her head against his shoulder and let out a shuddering sigh; her breath escaped her mouth in a fog.

“I’m just scared.” El mumbled.

“That’s okay. It’s okay to be scared.” Mike said, rubbing her arm. “I’m scared, too.”

“Of?”

“Losing you. Every day. It plays over and over in my mind like a broken record – I wouldn’t make it if you were gone again. I wouldn’t make it. I think I would die.” Mike laughed, though it really wasn’t even a joke. “I’d – rather die –”

“Shut up.” El said, laughing slightly and shaking her head. “We should stop saying that.”

“What?”

“That we would die for each other.”

“You’re right.” Mike nodded. “Someone could take us out really easily if they knew.”

El laughed again, leaning against his shoulder and turning to press a kiss to his cheek. He turned his head and caught her lips in his own. She sighed and leaned into him.

“You’re okay.” Mike said, pulling away and pressing a kiss to her forehead.

“Yeah.” El nodded, sitting up a bit straighter and standing. “I am now.”

“You want to go home?” Mike asked (it came out a bit more hopeful than he’d meant, but he was totally freezing). El nodded. “Alright. Let’s go home.”

Mike climbed back on his bike, El sliding on after him. She wrapped her arms around him, pressed her face against the fabric of his sweatshirt.

“I love you.” She said, and Mike paused. He always fumbled when she said that, as if she hadn’t been saying it for a year now.

“I love you, too.” He replied, kicking off from the ground and pedaling.

They were off.

**Author's Note:**

> thank you for reading <3 my tumblr is @timetravl / have a great day!


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